The American television program Californication centers on the character Hank Moody, a novelist-turned-scriptwriter making a living in the sinful Hollywood landscape. He's also a slut. But Hank's promiscuity shouldn't be construed as being misogynist. Instead, Lisa McKeown suggests that if you look a little closer, you'll see someone who can teach us about sexual creepiness, respect for the opposite sex, and what it means to live in a rape culture.

I had intended on discovering the literary scene in the Caribbean with only a slight side trip for the briefest of philosophy discussions, but the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray when one encounters Frédéric Gros.

The Mantle is pleased to present the fourth in a series of important blog posts by Cæmeron Crain addressing critical concepts in contemporary political philosophy. Cæmeron's previous post explored the contours of life in what the philosopher Gilles Deleuze called a "Society of Control." In what follows, Cæmeron begins the difficult process of articulating a practice of resistance to the "diffuse matrix" of late-capitalist power.

In Samuel Beckett's classic play "Waiting for Godot," two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait ... and wait ... for the arrival of a fellow named Godot. The play is bare, minimalist, even absurd. There is but one scene (a country road and a tree) and just a few characters. While waiting in vain for the arrival of another someone, the two main characters find in each other something profound and elemental. Eric Anthamatten explains.

It took him fifty years, but he finally did it. Arthur C. Danto's experience with Andy Warhol's "Brillo Box" (1964), coupled with his understanding of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (1917), convinced him that there must be something intrinsic about that thing we call "art" that transcends genre, context, and history. At the end of his life, Danto published his findings in What Art Is. Shaun Randol has this review.